Topic
Documentalist
About: Documentalist is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 66 publications have been published within this topic receiving 573 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
TL;DR: The work of the Belgian internationalist and documentalist, Paul Otlet (1868-1944), and his colleagues in Brussels, forms an important and neglected part of the history of information science as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The work of the Belgian internationalist and documentalist, Paul Otlet (1868–1944), and his colleagues in Brussels, forms an important and neglected part of the history of information science. They developed a complex of organizations that are similar in important respects functionally to contemporary hypertext7sol;hypermedia systems. These organizations effectively provided for the integration of bibliographic, image, and textual databases. Chunks of text on cards or separate sheets were created according to “the monographic principle” and their physical organization managed by the Universal Decimal Classification, created by the Belgians from Melvil Dewey's Decimal Classification. This article, discusses Otlet's concept of the Office of Documentation and, as examples of an approach to actual hypertext systems, several special Offices of Documentation set up in the International Office of Bibliography. In his Traite de Documentation of 1934, one of the first systematic treatises on what today we would call information science, Otlet speculated imaginatively about telecommunications, text-voice conversion, and what is needed in computer workstations, though of course he does not use this terminology. By assessing how the intellectual paradigm of nineteenth century positivism shaped Otlet's thinking, this study suggests how, despite its apparent contemporaneity, what he proposed was in fact conceptually different from the hypertext systems that have been developed or speculated about today. Such as analysis paradoxically also suggests the irony that a “deconstructionist” reading of accounts of these systems might find embedded in them the positivist approach to knowledge that the system designers would seem on the face of it explicitly to have repudiated. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
173 citations
Book•
1 Oct 2004
TL;DR: Frohmann as mentioned in this paper argues for a "deflationary" account of information in scientific knowledge production, arguing that scientific knowledge is not seen as a process of seeking, collecting, organizing, and processing abstract elements, but instead one of assembling the many different material 'bits and pieces' of scientific culture in order to make things work.
Abstract: Is disseminating information the main purpose of scholarly scientific literature? Recent work in science studies signals a shift of emphasis from conceptual to material sources, from thinking to doing, and from representing the world to intervening in it Scientific knowledge production is no longer seen as a process of seeking, collecting, organizing, and processing abstract elements, but instead one of assembling the many different material 'bits and pieces' of scientific culture in order to make things work In Deflating Information, Bernd Frohmann draws on recent work in the social studies of science, finding the most significant material in the coordination of research work, the stabilization of matters of fact, and the manufacture of objectivity Arguing for a 'deflationary' account of information, Frohmann challenges the central concept of information studies, thereby laying a foundation for a documentalist approach to emerging issues in the field
134 citations
Book•
12 Sep 2014
TL;DR: In this afterword, Ronald E. Day explains that the book examines the concept of “aboutness” in the modern documentary tradition covering information science and data science, and anticipates data and documents to both influence and be influenced by evolving technologies, cultural forms and social norms.
Abstract: In this book, Ronald Day offers a critical history of the modern tradition of documentation. Focusing on the documentary index (understood as a mode of social positioning), and drawing on the work of the French documentalist Suzanne Briet, Day explores the understanding and uses of indexicality. He examines the transition as indexes went from being explicit professional structures that mediated users and documents to being implicit infrastructural devices used in everyday information and communication acts. Doing so, he also traces three epistemic eras in the representation of individuals and groups, first in the forms of documents, then information, then data. Day investigates five cases from the modern tradition of documentation. He considers the socio-technical instrumentalism of Paul Otlet, "the father of European documentation" (contrasting it to the hermeneutic perspective of Martin Heidegger); the shift from documentation to information science and the accompanying transformation of persons and texts into users and information; social media's use of algorithms, further subsuming persons and texts; attempts to build android robots -- to embody human agency within an information system that resembles a human being; and social "big data" as a technique of neoliberal governance that employs indexing and analytics for purposes of surveillance. Finally, Day considers the status of critique and judgment at a time when people and their rights of judgment are increasingly mediated, displaced, and replaced by modern documentary techniques.
81 citations
TL;DR: Views of writers in the European documentalist, critical modernist, and Italian Autonomous Marxist influenced post-Fordist traditions, such as Otlet, Briet, Heidegger, Benjamin, Marazzi, and Negri, are discussed.
Abstract: This article presents European documentalist, critical modernist, and Autonomous Marxist influenced post-Fordist views regarding the management of knowledge in mid- and late twentieth century Western modernity and postmodernity, and the complex theoretical and ideological debates, especially concerning issues of language and community. The introduction and use for corporate, governmental, and social purposes of powerful information and communication technologies created conceptual and political tensions and theoretical debates. In this article, knowledge management, including the specific recent approach known as “Knowledge Management,” is discussed as a social, cultural, political, and organizational issue, including the problematic feasibility of capturing and representing knowledge that is “tacit,” “invisible,” and is imperfectly representable. “Social capital” and “affective labor” are discussed as elements of “tacit” knowledge. Views of writers in the European documentalist, critical modernist, and Italian Autonomous Marxist influenced post-Fordist traditions, such as Otlet, Briet, Heidegger, Benjamin, Marazzi, and Negri, are discussed.1
52 citations
TL;DR: The challenge of information explosion has been reflected in a number of recent articles in PHYSICS TODAY and in similar discussions in magazines of other fields and other countries as discussed by the authors, and there can hardly be a physicist who has not been jolted by the challenge of the information explosion.
Abstract: BY NOW THERE can hardly be a physicist who has not been jolted by the challenge of the information explosion. Some men have been so overcome that they have given up subscribing to The Physical Review for lack of shelf space. The widespread concern about this challenge has been reflected in a number of recent articles in PHYSICS TODAY and in similar discussions in magazines of other fields and other countries. Among the great bulk of physicists diverse attitudes prevail: Some remain happy in a speciality narrow enough so that they can feel “in the swim” if they keep in touch with a few colleagues and read a highly specialized journal; others rationalize with the comment that most of the literature is garbage anyway; a few pin their hopes on the vast improvements being made by their documentalist colleagues in the science of indexing and retrieval.
45 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2 |
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2017 | 1 |
| 2016 | 2 |
| 2015 | 2 |